


When You wish Upon A Star

by Maygra



Category: Smallville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-10-31
Updated: 2001-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maygra/pseuds/Maygra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disclaimer: Smallville isn't mine -- nor are the characters. They all belong to DC comics and The WB. Many thanks to LaT for the polish . Vaguely links into Catch a Falling Star as I try to build a foundation/background I can work with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You wish Upon A Star

When You wish Upon A Star  
By Maygra

Grimacing at the impact as the hammer slid off the gear and hit the shaft *again*, Jonathan rocked back on his heels and wiped his forehead with an already grimy denim-clad arm. He tapped the gear again, more in frustration than any further attempt to knock it loose. Dismantling the entire assembly wasn't a task he looked forward to and he gave the stuck gear one more hopeful shot of WD-40 and a few seconds before once more laying into the gear with the hammer in the hopes of knocking it loose.

It wasn't going to give. Jonathan finally admitted defeat in the face of something more stubborn than he was. He'd have to take the shaft apart and take the whole assembly into town; see if Jurgenson could get it to come loose with one of his fancy hydraulic wrenches. Which meant a day or two before he could get the field cleared for the clover he'd plant to let the earth rest. He might could borrow Anderson's hoe rig, but he hated to ask. They'd had a lot of rain lately and everyone was running behind. 

Gathering up tools and tossing the last of his frustration into the box with his gloves, he stood up and stretched. He had other things to do, and he should call Jurgenson to see if the mechanic could fit him in. If nothing else, he could get the seed moved out to the field. If Jurgenson was too busy, well, he could break the ground with the tiller and then pull the residue up with a harrow where it was too dense. He'd done harder work when he was growing up. Clark was old enough and good enough to finish the last of the late harvest on his own if he had to.

A second tractor would be good too, he thought, picking up the box, wondering if he should check the Trader and see if there were any foreclosures. As much as he hated to see anyone lose their land, it was still the best way to pick up used equipment. 

But he'd promised Clark they'd try to get him a truck of his own. The lack of one wouldn't hurt Clark and he'd probably understand, but even Jonathan knew it might still seem a bit unfair when just a few days ago, Clark had been offered a brand new Ford which Jonathan hadn't allowed him to keep. 

It had been as much gut response as anything, as had his near angry words to Clark afterwards. He knew his son better than that. Clark hadn't saved Lex Luthor because of any sense of reward, any more than he'd jumped out of the truck to pull Whitney from the wreckage of his own vehicle in some vain hope he and Whitney might become friends. 

And if the Fordman's had sent Clark a truck in thanks for saving their son's life? 

He didn't much like the answer he had to that.

They'd make do. And he'd keep that half-promise, see if he couldn't find Clark a used truck. May as well be used, the way Clark liked to take things apart and put them back together again. He smiled to himself, patting the side of the old Ford tractor as he headed to the barn to put away the tools. Relegated to junk for the most part, it now ran as well as the newer tractor. That had been quite a birthday present. Martha had been quietly urging him to scrap the old '52 Ford tractor for several years, reminding him, with his own words, that "sentiment could not be attached to either equipment or livestock on a working farm." She'd finally stopped and Jonathan thought it only a lull before she tried something less subtle -- like planting pole beans around the tires and letting them use the frame to climb on. Or hanging her wash on it. Turning it into a planter. 

He'd been unsuspecting until he heard Clark start the old thing up and drive it out -- loud and belching diesel smoke, the old red and white paint polished and waxed as it hadn't been even on the showroom floor in '52. It was a workhorse of days gone by -- not used much now save to till up Martha's kitchen garden or used to haul seed or fertilizer and the occasional wagon of hay a couple of times a year. Jonathon had driven it pretty proudly in the Labor day parade, Clark and Martha tossing popcorn balls and bags of cookies and brownies from the wagon. 

And it could still haul a tiller or a rake -- just not the big rigs he needed to keep the farm on the edge of profitability. Profitability meaning they didn't starve or have to sell or lease off any the several thousand acres that still had the Kent name on the deed registered at the county seat. 

Of course, if he sold off the old Ford to a collector or a smaller farm, he might get enough to buy Clark that truck he'd half promised.

Had promised, if only in his own mind. 

The rumble and grinding of gears caught his attention, a dust cloud approaching and he waited, for lack of anything better to do, for the school bus to stop at the end of the drive. Maybe he should suggest that Clark take a look at the engine of the big yellow hulk and see if he could make it run a bit more smoothly. It was a good thing to know your way around an engine -- be it a tractor, truck or car. Jonathan could do most of his own maintenance, but Clark seemed to have a real gift for it. A big plus on a farm. 

Not that Clark was likely to stick with the farm, Jonathan knew, watching his son step down off the bus and wave at his friends. He seemed to like the work most of the time, took a real pleasure, as Jonathan did, in coaxing a good crop out of the soil. But it was a pleasure that wouldn't hold him forever. Couldn't. Not when Clark had far more remarkable gifts than being able to find his way around a diesel engine. 

Not that you could see them. Not those gifts -- Jonathan and Martha both had been careful, quietly encouraging Clark to keep his rather remarkable talents on the obscure side. It had seemed odd at first -- more frightening than remarkable. Chalked up to the other oddities in and around the meteor shower that had hit Smallville twelve years ago. Oddities that seemed to be cropping up more and more often as the years passed -- giving rise to speculation, suspicion, some fear. Fears Jonathan hadn't wanted to see turned against his son as they had been against others. Some folks had moved away with the rise of six fingered children and two headed cows and featherless chickens. Jonathan was of a mind that much of that could be laid at the feet of Luthor Corp with their "advanced technologies" and "22nd century bio-engineering" of crops and fertilizers and God knew what else. It was difficult to assign insidious consequences on the disaster that had brought he and Martha the son they never thought they'd have. Much easier to blame Lionel Luthor and his greed; to blame his, just this side of legal, business dealings. 

He understood the fears other folks had for their kids, for themselves. Some of the family businesses that had suffered badly in the fall of rock from the skies had never recovered. There was still a gap on main street where the old drugstore had stood, the rest of the brick had to be pulled down and the adjacent buildings shored up. He'd have thought someone would have rebuilt on the corner lot, but it had remained empty until finally, on the tenth anniversary of the meteor strike, the city fathers -- and mothers -- had dragged one of the bigger chunks of shale and iron into the space, put in grass and benches and flowers and a big plaque in commemoration of the events and the lives lost -- the latter had been remarkably low, given the actual scope of the disaster. Jonathan had tired not to think about what the loss of life could have been in a more densely populated place, like Metropolis. It had been bad enough here.

They'd talked about it, about moving, he and Martha, about a year afterward, when Clark was settled in, was theirs in all the ways that mattered, emotionally and legally. Martha had been nervous, worried about Clark, about their ability to keep the farm going, whether Clark would be accepted as he grew older. They'd made a conscious decision not to have his birthday coincide with the meteor strike, but privately -- he and Martha both still gave in to the need to celebrate on that day. Clark could have been no more than four or five when he found them, or so it seemed. He didn't speak for months -- which worried them both a bit. He made sounds, noises that sounded like talking, but they didn't understand him. He was quicker to pick up their meanings. 

They'd waited until they had the adoption papers securely in hand before taking him to the doctor. His sudden appearance, his strange sounds, all set aside in the general weirdness that followed the meteor shower. The adoption of a five year old by Jonathan and Martha Kent had gone largely unremarked upon -- but to get him enrolled in preschool, a year late and not speaking well, he had to have his shots and a doctor's bill of health. 

They'd managed to put off Dr. Graham by telling him they'd rather take Clark to the pediatrician in Metropolis that had seen him prior to his adoption. There hadn't been one, of course, and they hated lying to the man who'd been doctor to both of them since their own childhoods, but the truth was, they didn't know what to expect. 

In retrospect, Jonathan wasn't sure if the small lie had been better or worse. They'd found a doctor. In truth, they'd found three, each one as baffled as the next. Routine examinations went all right. Good hearing, good vision, excellent heart rate, breathing clear -- alert and responsive. Good looking boy, Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent. Looks healthy. Let's just draw a little blood and give him his shots. 

Clark didn't cry when the first needle broke off, nor the second. He didn't even seem to notice -- didn't notice until he saw his mother starting to get upset, and dismay of the nurse who was appalled at her failure to do something as simple as draw blood. Then the doctor getting frustrated and embarrassed, muttering something about a bad shipment of needles, and tried to give Clark a shot in his bare, chubby bottom, and broke another needle in the effort. Martha had swept him up in her arms then, and it was then that Clark started to cry, upset by his mother's distress, by the fuss being made. He'd calmed down by the time they got him to the truck. 

Another doctor, with similar results, this one more curious than embarrassed and hadn't Jonathon gotten his wife and son out of there quickly, even before Clark's face had kind of gotten that look on it -- the first time Jonathan had seen fear on the small face. 

They'd spent the night in a hotel -- Jonathan calling in a favor from a neighbor to make sure the livestock got checked on and fed, and the cows milked. Then he'd started calling, looking for some other way for Clark to get his vaccinations, orally. Except for the Polio vaccine, they were out of luck. 

Jonathan had spent a sleepless night, wondering what they could do, other than home school Clark, wondering why it hadn't occurred to him until now that it was odd that Clark had managed to walk away from the crash of his small ship without a bruise. That to his recollection, Clark had not injured himself once in the past year, although he regularly stumbled or fell as children will. No scraped knees or burned fingers. 

They'd tried one more doctor, with little hope and got the same results, only Clark did get his polio vaccine and a paper to prove it. For almost the entire drive back, Jonathan had contemplated forging the rest of the check boxes and hoped no one would double check -- or alternately, to let Dr. Graham in on their secret and ask the old man to help them cover up this oddity of Clark's. 

He could have gone back to Luthor, but he was wary of letting Lionel Luthor know more about Clark than was necessary and between the lesser of two evils, they had sought out Dr. Graham. 

Who had promptly told them that state agencies dealing in adoptions were bound by law to make sure the children under their care were vaccinated and they could get a letter from them. Which they couldn't, or Jonathan didn't think they could. Dr. Graham managed to snap off a needle as well. He hadn't tried again and he'd written out a note stating his medical opinion that the boy was up to date -- enough to get Clark enrolled -- then gone on to tell them about the number of strange medical issues that had come up since the meteor shower. It was all in all, a very odd conversation to have. Jonathan never knew if Dr. Graham had still been a little miffed they hadn't come to see him in the first place or if he had suspected something. 

It hadn't really mattered after all. No one really called him on it, and if he'd felt less guilty to begin with -- less guilty about adopting a boy that he knew nothing about without much more than cursory search for his legal guardians; less guilty about realizing, even subconsciously, that there was something about Clark that needed to remain secret. If he hadn't already been fighting with the idea that something about the way they had taken Clark as their own was, in a sense, wrong. Wrong since God hadn't graced them with kids of their own. If he hadn't felt guilty about going to Luthor, he'd have remembered that in a town like Smallville, among people who cared more about the people and the land than the strict legality of the bigger world beyond, his word would have been good enough. That he could have told Susie Wright at the preschool that Clark had gotten all his shots before he was adopted and she'd have believed him. That if he'd told them about the broken needles, the people in Smallville who would have cared about such things would have eventually chalked it up to the weirdness that descended on Smallville after the meteor shower was over. Chalked it up and forgotten about it, as they did so much else. Looked the other way somewhat, and gone on. 

But he hadn't. He started with some small lies, some small obscurities, a few casual diversions and while he wasn't getting feelings of some huge comeuppance headed his way, he still had a sense that time, and his lies, were catching up with him. With his family. 

With his son. 

He and Martha had taught Clark honesty, and the worth of hard work, tried to instill in him some sense of values, a sense of fair play. And he'd learned. Learned better than perhaps his father when the final comparison was made. Clark was consistently honest. Almost painfully, as most adolescent and teens were, *open* in what he felt and thought. There wasn't much hidden behind the hazel eyes or the expressive mouth that was as quick to smile as it was to frown in displeasure or confusion. He was earnest too, and a little shy -- which was no trait of either his father or mother and Jonathan could only chalk that up to the need for Clark to hide so much of who he was...and lately, now that he knew, *what* he might be. He was respectful to his elders, polite to everyone -- well most everyone. Jonathan hadn't missed the friction between Clark and Whitney Fordman. He had to wonder how much of that was just high school territory staking, and how much of it had to do with Lana. Or how much of it had to do with the fact that although as tall as the others in his class, Clark was a year or so behind them. He'd had to learn to talk, then to read, and he'd done it quickly...but he'd still been seven or more before hitting the first grade. It hadn't made much difference really, until he hit puberty. Growing so fast and so tall, Martha hadn't been able to keep up with him -- suddenly having to clothe Clark, not from the boy's department in the Sears catalog, to having to take up seams and hems from Jonathan's old clothes. Threatening Jonathan with having to take out a second mortgage to keep their son decently clothed. 

Soon he was taller than most of his friends, and in the next year or two, the gap got wider. Clark had wanted to try summer school to catch up, but Jonathan had been wary, uncertain. He needed Clark to help him in the summer, and he didn't want folks to think his son too slow, to have to attend summer school. Still, he'd almost said yes, given Clark that advantage, except the Lowell county Schools weren't really set up for that sort of thing, to give Clark a leg up into classes that were more in line with his height and his age. And that spring, Clark had hit six foot, making Jonathan wonder if they hadn't missed his actual age by more than a year. He'd seemed the right size for a four year old, but he might have been small for that age, small for six...or seven.

And there was no way for them to be sure, no one they could check with. No idea what any of it meant. Dr. Graham had been dead for three or four years by then, and the new Doc, who was nice enough -- well, Jonathan didn't know him or trust him as much. 

Like most boys who hit their growth spurt early, Clark was awkward with his. It had been purely an accident that he'd found out what those longer legs could do. How *fast* he was. Another thing to be hidden. Another reason for Clark not to take the classes he'd wanted to while they tried to get a line on just what else his growing body was capable of. More reasons to keep him out of play groups and little league sports. Nine years old by Jonathan's reckoning and his son could out run the Ford truck, the trains...just about anything. Eleven years old and he could lift the front end of the big combine without breaking a sweat. Games of catch in the yard became more about how many balls Clark could lose in the cornfields -- or the next county. Clark had been as amazed as his father, as "freaked" as his mother. 

They spent an entire summer making sure he could control those extraordinary abilities. Clark had done it, wanting his father's approval more than wanting to impress his friends, wanting his mother to stop having that worried, anxious look on her face when she thought he didn't see her. He'd gotten quieter. He'd taken on his mother's vaguely worried look. He'd stayed close to Jonathan as if his father were somehow the magic spell that would keep him from becoming either a freak or a monster. They wanted to protect Clark as well as others, but it had left him awkward and shy around other children. They'd eased up then, realizing that it was difficult enough to be an only child, hard for a boy to experience much of anything with only adults to talk to -- he was so bright, so curious and smart that it made his first tries at friendship with Pete and Greg painful to watch. 

He'd learned though, as he 'd learned everything else, nervous but not willing to give up. It made him try harder with Greg Arken who wasn't well liked, taught him loyalty, and persistence. And the Rosses, the whole noisy mess of them, had given him more social skills than Jonathan and Martha could offer alone. Made Clark more aware of what was denied him, for right or wrong. 

Clark had changed and Jonathan noticed it. Saw it happening day to day, hour to hour and didn't know how to stop it, how to fix it, so he did what he could -- the only thing he could. He kept reminding Clark that even though he was special, that he could still fit in, still be normal. Normal was what people expected and that was all he needed to be, behave like. 

It took more concentration and more energy from his son than Jonathan had realized and the gap between he and his friends, except for a very few, like Pete and Chloe, widened further. It left him ill prepared for the strains of high school with all its ready made divisions between Freshmen and upperclassmen. Unprepared for the constant maneuvering in and out of the social graces unique to high school. 

Jonathan had barely been aware of them in his own years at school, but then he'd been at the top of the social ladder. He'd been the football hero, dating the head cheerleader and the homecoming queen, certain he and Martha would get married. A hero to many of his classmates, and never really thinking about how what, and where, and who he was, in the social order, might appear to those at the bottom of the pile, to the geeks and not so cool and the different, and socially awkward.

Like his son. 

It hadn't stopped Clark from pulling Whitney from his truck, or shielding the other boy's body with his own. He supposed, in the grand scheme of things, whatever mistakes he'd made with Clark hadn't been horrible ones, but they hadn't left his son without scars, or undamaged.

No, needles couldn't break his son's skin, nor tiller blades, nor fireballs. But there had to be a limit somewhere to what his body could take. He wasn't invulnerable. Couldn't be. And he certainly wasn't invulnerable to hurt, to pain that made him turn away from his father, or made him retreat into silence when he felt he'd been betrayed or lied to -- after everything Jonathan had taught him about the importance of honesty.

He raised his hand to greet his son, felt the flood of warmth he got when he got that unreserved grin turned on him -- Clark forgetting for the moment that he wasn't entirely happy with his father. 

"Get it working?" he asked, cinching his back pack higher on his shoulder, ready to join Jonathan before giving even a second thought to the after school snack his mother would have ready for him. 

Jonathan glanced back at the rig and shook his head. "Nope. Was just going in to call Jurgenson, see if he can work it loose. Won't hurt anything, but the lie fields to have to wait a few days."

"Want me to try?" Clark asked, offering and Jonathan almost told him no, annoyance rising. Hadn't he just spent the better part of two hours trying to get the damn thing loose? Only there was more to the question and Jonathan was glad he had, at some point in his life, occasionally learned to think before he spoke. 

"Sure. Let's give it a try," he made himself say, thinking even as he said it, that he'd become so accustomed to Clark hiding his strength, that he was starting to believe it wasn't there. And it wasn't just his physical strength Clark was hiding.

It worked, of course. Clark was careful not to crush the iron and steel as he forced the two locked gears in opposite directions and then rolled them while Jonathan liberally dosed both parts with more oil. Jonathan pulled the rasp out of his tool box to file down the rough edges that had made the gear jam in the first place.

Clark held the whole assembly steady. Half a ton at least, held up in his hands as if it weighed no more than a piece of plywood. All clear and Clark jumped in the cab to make sure the rig wouldn't hang, grinning at his father when the blades turned easily and smoothly. Cutting the engine, Clark leapt down, his own smile reflecting the pleasure Jonathan knew his son saw on his father's face.

He should have known that Clark's abilities, his gifts, would translate into wanting to help where he could. He'd taught the boy himself, after all. Taught him better than he had learned himself. And Clark hadn't done it for reward, save his father's approval. Probably hadn't even occurred to him that this repair would save the family some money. He'd done it solely to help out his father, because he could.

Jonathan didn't know any longer how to prove to Clark that his father approved of him in every respect. Clark didn't trust blindly everything Jonathan said any longer. It wasn't overt or defiant and not Clark's fault at all. Only Jonathan's.

"Nice work, son," Jonathan told him, then, gripping his shoulder, heart tightening at the smile he got, at the way Clark was embarrassingly pleased by his father's approval. Jonathan could never remember wanting his own father's approval so badly. 

Clark shrugged, picked up his back pack and dropped his gaze. "I was careful. Don't think I bent it," he said, glancing at his father from under his lashes, then at the rig. 

"Did it just right. Thank you -- " Jonathan said, squeezing his son's shoulder, noting the muscle there, but it didn't seem like anything extraordinary. Flesh and bone, warm from blood and the heat of the sun on the dark flannel. He wanted to say more, saw the discomfort rise in his son's face, and dropped his hand. The wariness was back, Clark uncomfortable or confused by the thanks for something Jonathan mostly tried to ignore or pretend wasn't there. A defense mechanism Jonathan used to let his son feel the sense of normal he'd said was lacking in his life right now. How normal was it, after all, for Clark to do what he'd done, to admit that Lex had hit him at 60 mph or better? That he could thrust his whole forearm into a wood chipper and do more damage to his clothes and the chipper blades than to his arm?

Damage Jonathan still couldn't believe was non-existent even as he'd pulled his son's arm from the chipper, nearly getting his own hand caught. He thought, in hindsight, that it was the danger to *him* than had finally convinced Clark to pull his arm back. But there hadn't been any damage -- oh, his shirtsleeves were gone, but there wasn't a mark on the smooth, tanned forearm he'd held tightly, looking for mangled flesh and broken bones and blood. Even Clark's fingernails had been unmarked. It surprised Jonathan still that he was still surprised by it -- as Clark wasn't, as if Clark had come to terms with his peculiar invulnerability before his father had. 

As Jonathan couldn't. It seemed unlikely at best, impossibly strange at worst and there were reasons to worry. Reasons to feel like whatever Clark was or was becoming, it might not be permanent, or if it were, might not be an absolute. Martha was better. Martha accepted what Jonathan was still trying to get his mind wrapped around. 

And Clark was taking at face value the increased signs of his difference at the same time he wanted desperately to be free of them. 

Or maybe his memory wasn't as clear as Jonathan's. Maybe he had already accepted that these changes: the strength, the speed, the impervious to harm externals would always be there, that the magic might never wear off. Only that wasn't the case and Jonathan, even when he'd touched his son's unmarked skin after the chipper demonstration, couldn't quite rid himself of the feeling that at some point -- Clark was going to have to deal with that as well. 

He and Martha had been scared a couple of times, inherited fears of another generation's loss of children to childhood illnesses. Softly spoken stories from parents and grandparents of babes buried too young, of dates and family events marked by the loss of this or that brother or sister, cousin, uncle to whooping cough, to influenza. The kind of once common deaths that had all but disappeared by the time Martha and Jonathan were born. 

They got their first scare a couple of years after Clark had started school. He had been playing with Pete and Greg in the woods, near the old foundry, and Clark had fallen down a slope. By the time his friends got to him, he was pale and shaking, covered in dirt and debris, sweating, but cold. Pete had run the entire way back to get them, lead them to Clark. Jonathan had carried Clark back home, holding the small body tightly, Martha at his elbow, wiping Clark's face, worried about concussion or poisoning in whatever detritus was left from the foundry. Jonathan had called Dr. Graham while Martha washed the dirt off Clark, got his clothes off, looking for any sign of another injury that could cause such a profound reaction. 

By the time Dr. Graham got there, Clark was clean and in bed and showing no signs of whatever had assailed him, saying he felt fine. Dr. Graham could find no bumps or scratches, no injury at all, baffled by the description of symptoms, almost ready to leave them with simple instructions to watch him for a day or so, feed him ginger ale and a good broth. Martha gathered up the dirty clothes in her arms before coming in to smile at Clark, to ask him what he wanted first, ready to coddle her sick child. 

It had started again, no warning, Dr. Graham alarmed but he could find no cause. Clark's skin was cold, he was shaking with a fine tremor, obviously sick and ready to throw up. Martha had been faster to react than Jonathan, hurrying to get towels and an extra blanket. By the time she returned the fit was over. Clark looked tired and scared but not ill any longer.

One of them had stayed with him day and night, never leaving him for a more than a few minutes to get food. Dr. Graham had come by twice a day, until Clark was fitful because of his forced bed stay. Pete and Greg had been by daily to see if Clark was better, could he come play -- we're sorry, Mr. Kent, we won't go play there anymore. 

Three days of that and Clark was up again, as full of energy as ever, his brief illness forgotten in the joy of being free to go back to school, to play with his friends, eat something more than broth and crackers.

It had happened a couple of other times, Dr. Graham hazarding a guess that it might be a kind of allergy at best, at worst it might be a fit or spasm, like epilepsy, that he might outgrow. Without blood work they couldn't know, still didn't know, and Dr. Graham had died so Jonathan didn't know what to do if it happened again. Not that they'd ever had to do anything. He seemed to come out of it on his own. Which left Jonathan wondering if Clark did have some kind of epilepsy rather than just the awkward coltish clumsiness of a young man growing faster than his brain could adjust to. 

It wasn't what Jonathan would ever have wished for his son. Martha kept warning him that it was time, past time for Clark to start being able to make mistakes but Jonathan was afraid of those mistakes, about what they could mean. 

Football was the latest point of conflict, and it nearly killed Jonathan to say no -- knowing all too well what it was like to be on the football team, to be the center of attention. And Clark could be careful. He could also be careless -- not in the way of not taking note of his own strength, but in using it easily, around home. Moving the big old Fridgidaire for his mother the way Jonathan would move a kitchen chair. Lifting the tiller assembly like his mother lifted a rake. 

Too easy to see him get excited in a game and go for a tackle that could dislocate another boy's shoulder, or break his back. That wasn't the kind of mistake Clark could afford to make - not at the expense of another even though Jonathan knew, right down to the soles of his feet, that if it happened once, it would never happen again. 

He'd reached the end of what he knew that could help his son. Watching Clark ease back, gather up his books and things, not knowing what to say, as awkward with his father now as he had been with other children when he was younger.

"So, how was school?" Jonathan asked, afraid of losing that connection, of letting Clark slip another step away without at least trying. Jonathan could be stubborn and persistent, too. 

Clark shrugged, but he hovered. "Okay. Nothing much going on. Tests. Homework. Stuff." He shifted, trying to find other words, and coming up empty.

"Anything -- classes giving you trouble?" Jonathan pushed, feeling the unsteady of rhythm of the conversation falter.

"Uh, no...English, maybe. Papers to write. Three this quarter," he offered giving a little roll of his eyes, the first returning glimmer of a smile. 

"Ah, now there you might have to ask you mother for help. I was never very good about writing papers -- unless they were about farming. Or cars."

"Yeah. I thought I might...or maybe, Lana. She's good at that stuff."

For the first time in awhile, Jonathan thought he might be back on steady ground. Girls...and young men's ideas about girls, those he could talk about. He wasn't that old. "You and Lana finally getting to be friends after all this time?"

"Kind of. Maybe," Clark said dropping his gaze. "I mean she's...."

"You could do a lot worse," Jonathan offered with a chuckle. "She's a nice girl. Real pretty, too."

"I'd kind of noticed," Clark said, still standing, waiting, trying so hard. "You used to date her aunt Nell, right?"

"Once," Jonathan said, with a mock warning. "One time. She thinks it was more, but in my head...we only had one date."

"Why does she think it's more?" Clark asked openly curious. 

Jonathan picked up the tool box and Clark stepped in, enough of a sign and Jonathan headed for the barn, Clark falling in step beside him. "Well, we went out a few times, but I only asked her out once. Other times, when we went, she asked. When I was your age, it wasn't a date unless the guy asked."

"Mom never asked you out?"

"Maybe once or twice, but I always seemed to beat her to it -- see, I wanted to be dating your mother." Jonathan let Clark get the smaller side door, carrying the box in and setting it on the work bench. "And I was afraid, if I didn't ask her out a lot, some other fella would...so..."

Clark smiled at that. "Fell hard, huh?"

"Like a ton of bricks," Jonathan admitted. "That what you've done?"

Clark gave him a startled look, and hunched his shoulders again. "Maybe. Kinda. But...she's with Whitney."

Whitney. Who was on the football team. "Things change, son." Which was pale advice, Jonathan knew. "Lana seems like a pretty smart girl."

"I'm not quite prime choice, Dad," Clark said, reaching out to twist a hammer in its slot. 

"Don't underestimate yourself, Clark. What about Chloe?"

Clark fell silent and shouldered his backpack. "She's a good friend," he said after a moment. 

"So's your mother, Clark," Jonathan said but he could see in his son's face that Clark was unconvinced, or just infatuated. Or maybe something deeper. "Keep that in mind when you talk to Lana."

"Yeah, I will. Thanks," Clark said, polite and nodding but he was already backing away. "I'm gonna go in."

"Tell your mother I'll be in in a bit."

Agreement and the wooden door closed, the barn dark and cool as Jonathan put the tools away, fitting each into its place, wiping the grease off.

He took a few minutes, then climbed the steps, looking around the loft, where the telescope waited for darkness to show off its best abilities. He touched nothing, only looked around. Seeing a couple of new books, a metal box he hadn't seen before, but most of the things were familiar, reassuring in their sameness. 

There were moments he wished he could freeze time. Or maybe rewind it a bit and redo it. Second guessing himself and knowing it would do no good. He couldn't undo anything. What he'd done and why...

He stared up at the deepening blue of the sky. They'd dropped an answer once. Answered a prayer. A wish. 

Or maybe it really had been the wave of a tinfoil wand from a little girl. Lana's ability to grant a wish had cost her a lot. Jonathan couldn't help but wonder what it would cost he and Martha to have had it answered. 

He dropped his gaze, saw Clark leave the house with Martha, a basket in hand, heading for the kitchen garden. Laughing with his mother, Martha laying a hand lightly on his arm and giving him a playful shove. 

The thing about wishes was, sometimes they came true. 

Even if only for a little while. 

~end~

10/31/2001


End file.
